Monthly Archives: October 2012

Fan Mail 2.0

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Housekeeping is good. It helps you run a better blog. I occasionally do little things for my blog to give it a manicure. For instance, every so often I take it to the mall and let it try on new layouts and themes. So far, I think it looks best the way it’s dressed, so all we’ve done is window shopped.

One of the fun little housekeeping activities I enjoy is answering frequently asked questions from my readers. It’s been awhile since I last did this, so let’s shake the cobwebs off the rugs and the ol’ spam widget today for a little Halloween cleaning, shall we?

To the spam mobile!

Dear Emily,

an proud of her for that. sensation the gentle impression ans and her As more gentle approaches. adequate feather was as notion nevertheless her go away the holy grail.
this can be carl, i stated around the command pass just now? i really like my rubbish.

- how to trade binary options

Really, Binary Options? You like your rubbish? To each his own, I suppose. Also, I’d like to introduce you to a little someone called Horse Ebooks.

Scategorically,

Emily

__________

Dear Emily,

Hi there, We’ve been to your blog a few times. I got word about it through my girl. I decided to post a comment. We like laughs; so We contemplated enjoying a new joke with you not to mention your visitors. A couple is lying in bed. The man says, “I am going to make you the happiest woman in the world” The woman says, “I’ll miss you.”

- A Joke

I’m thrilled that you finally decided to post a comment, A Joke. There are so many sleeper readers out there who read my blog but never say anything, so hopefully you will encourage others to take the chance. I am totally LOLing over your joke. Where’d you hear it? A joke book in the clearance bin at a bookstore at an outlet mall?

Yours in humor,

Emily

__________

Dear Emily,

could you improve your way of writing?

- bioloche

Probably, but since I write for free, this is likely as good as it’s ever going to get, Bioloche.

Stagnantly,

Emily

__________

Dear Emily,

please when you’re posting, do it carefully not to say the wrong thing.

-Casaemail

This is actually some really good advice, Casaemail. Just the other day I was sitting down to write a post about my seven month old baby. The words were coming. I mean, there was some real automatic writing going on here. But then, when I went back to read what I had written, I realized that the entire post was about carburetors and paper clips. Oops.

Thanks,

Emily

__________

Dear Emily,

I’m just writing to let you be aware of of the perfect experience our princess encountered browsing your webblog. She mastered a good number of pieces, not to mention what it is like to possess an amazing teaching nature to make the others just thoroughly grasp some hard to do topics. You truly exceeded readers’ desires. Many thanks for giving these warm and helpful, trusted, informative not to mention fun tips about the topic to Jane.

- Ugg Boots Australia

What what what WHAT!? You mean to tell me that Princess Jane is now reading my blog? I have arrived! Freshly Pressed, Smeshly Freshed! This is the preferred blog of her royal highness Jane, Princess of Ugg Boots Australia! Is there a badge I can put on my blog that touts this distinction? I’d love to put it up.

Your loyal subject,

Emily

__________

Dear Emily,

I seldom leave remarks, but i did some searching and woundup here Tales of the World: Get Naked | The Waiting.And I do have some questions for you if you tend not to mind.Is it just me or does it appear like some of the responses look like coming from
brain dead people? :-P And, if you are writing at other online socialsites, I’d like to follow everything fresh you have to post. Would you list of all of your shared pages like your Facebook page, twitter feed, or linkedin profile?

- 50 Shades of Grey

You are one to talk about brain dead people, 50 Shades of Grey. I mean, come on; the irony is just too delicious for me to not point this out. I did notice that Speaker7 commented on the jimjilbang post, so is this your retribution for her recraps? Really? Is this the best you can do? Sorry, but she has commented on my blog way more than you have so I am on her side. You have no ally in me, boo.

Yours,

Emily

******

Happy Halloween!

Related Awesomeness:

Fan Mail Volume I

A Big Announcement

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From the moment you get pregnant and realize that a family – your very own made-from-scratch family – is on the horizon, your thoughts shift. People will ask you what’s to come for your growing family, and as much as you resent their intrusiveness, you start to wonder if there will ever be more.

Once you get through those horrific, non-sleeping first months, your mind begins to meander. You can do this. You can make something again.

And you start to plan. The plan is good. Even though you don’t have a lot of money and don’t know how you are going to afford the baby you already have, you know that since you want this one thing enough, you will be able to make it happen because that’s what families do.

All of a sudden, that special, wonderful thing you had been planning and working so hard to create just EXISTS. Although your partner assisted you in creating that one special thing, you know that it was all you who brought it to its fruition. Your motherhood is engorged and you are elated.

So, without further ado, a major announcement:

Wee Cee is going to be an owl for Halloween. 

And I made her costume myself:

Here’s the back:

And one more:

What? What did you think I was going to announce?

Happy Halloween!

PS, Feel free to Pin the crap out of this post! ;D

Meet Ed Pate, Salesman

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My besfrinn Cameron recently sent me Bossypants and aside from leaving me in sheer wonderment of the modern-day goddess that is Tina Fey, it made me think a lot about my own dad. Tina Fey devotes an entire chapter – “That’s Don Fey” – to her dad and an adventure she had with him whilst renting a wet vac from the grocery store. It is an adventure! She makes it so. The occupational hazard for reading Bossypants is trying not to plagiarize the entire book, so I’m just going to say that it serves more as a writing prompt than anything else for this little essay about my dad – Ed Pate. Also, props go to Brother Jon for inviting us all to write about our dads today. I will take every opportunity I can to think about my wonderful father.

Ed Pate was a salesman. He was a salesman with vigor. Arguably, in order to be any kind of good salesman, you have to do it with vigor, but Ed Pate set the bar high. He sold heavy machinery for Caterpillar and he loved those ridiculous machines. The majority of our family vacations were road trips and while we were on the road, we’d pass sites laying pipeline with other kinds of equipment – John Deere, Komatsu – and Ed Pate would orate to my mom, my brother, and me exactly WHY the Caterpillar DC845673B backhoe could do it better. We’d glaze over but he was in the zone. If he was really feeling it, he’d pull off the road to investigate the site and the machines. Not to sell anything, mind you, just to see how crappily the Komatsu was doing its job. This was a necessary chore, you see. If you can’t believe in your machine, what can you believe in?

The answer is, apparently, very little, except for stale Maxwell House coffee sweetened with Sweet & Low. It’s the Ed Pate way.

Ed Pate worked at the Caterpillar office off Nonconnah close to the airport. There were picnic tables out front so my mom would schlep us down there during the summers to have a picnic lunch with him. This was fun but gross. Ed Pate’s entire office was covered in a thin layer of dust and smelled like an oil change and cigarettes. He didn’t smoke – he sang the chorus of “Smoke Smoke Smoke (That Cigarette)” whenever he saw someone light up – but smelling like nicotine was part of the job. The secretaries (this was back when people still had secretaries and called them that) at his office were all named Shirley and were likely the source of the smoke, not to mention the financial solvency of Tab.

When you are a salesman, you have to have fun things in your office to make you seem more approachable. If you play with your clients, you trick them into buying more machines than they likely need. Ed Pate heard this somewhere but obviously did not take it into consideration that since he was already the most likable and honest guy ever, he didn’t need gimmicks. Since he was a heavy equipment dealer in the South, he kept a can of tinned possum in his desk. I credit the can of tinned possum for putting braces on my teeth. Oh sure, he had the wherewithal to purchase the novelty item at the Cracker Barrel store so some of the credit goes to him. Some.

When I was eleven, he started working from home. The storage room off of our garage was converted into his home office. This was also the year he got a car phone. Not a cell phone, a car phone. It was basically the same as a home phone except it was in your car. It came with a spiral cord, a jack, and an instruction book that could be used as a booster seat for small children. And when it broke, you had to take your entire car into the shop and wait all afternoon to get it fixed. Ed Pate would often drive us to school and make sales calls on the car phone. He was a good Christian man who I never, ever heard say a swear word, so when he put the car phone on speaker and his client dropped every word in the book all in good humor, it was tons o’ fun to see him get squeamish and remind the guy that his kids were in the car and to keep it PG. The client would rarely do so, so it was extra fun to see Ed Pate try to make a sale while at the same time deciding what was more dangerous – exposing the kids to the eff word or not driving hands-free. He usually opted for both, which added the task of not taking out pedestrians to the roster.

Ed Pate had a coffee mug with a Far Side cartoon of a guy selling refrigerators to Eskimos on it. It said something like, “Ralph Smith, King of Salesmen.” My dad was the real-life king of salesmen. I miss him a lot, but I’m pretty sure he’s selling halos to the angels now and earning a hefty commission.

Lifestyles of the Middle Class and Unbabyproofed

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I’m handing the blog over today to the real star of the show, Miss C.

OH HI. Why don’t you just come in and I’ll give you a tour of my awesomely dangerous home. I freaking love it here. Would you believe that this front hallway used to be clear of all debris? That’s what my parents tell me. They said that before I was born, they managed to keep our apartment nice and tidy. LOOOOOOOL.

Here we have my parents’ bookshelf in their room. It came into existence when they were in grad school and in need of cheap shelves from Ikea. I personally LOVE to pull off every single item from the bottom shelf, and I’m really looking forward to getting tall enough to pull the thing down entirely.

One of my personal favorite pastimes is going after the cords to the router next to the bookcase. Did you know they are simply DELISH and completely fascinating?

Not to outdo the bookshelf in my parents’ room, I also have a bookshelf in my own room. My utterly genius mother decided before I was born that it would be just fabulous to outfit my nursery with a bookcase that nearly reaches the ceiling and then discard the anchor brackets. Sure, I laugh at this, but it’s only a coping mechanism since I am related to this woman and likely inherited her idiocy. And yes those are ceramic figurines on my shelf. I can’t wait to destroy them.

Here I am enjoying one of my favorite toys in the entire apartment: a white tag. Screw the boxes that toys come in. The most underappreciated plaything in the world is a tag. I just can’t get enough of them. The more expensive item they’re attached to is, the better. I may be under a year old, but irony is not lost on me.

Tags are fine, but do you know what else is? Plungers! And toilet brushes! They are truly great and I love to go after them and attempt to eat them. My mom has thwarted all my attempts to get ahold of them, but I am hatching a plan to go after them in the night and have my way with them. Hepatitis, here I come!

My poor mom. She used to have a love affair with bric-a-brac. More like, bric-a-crap, AMIRITE? Yeah, so no more “Happy Harvest.” More like “Hap Harvey.” Sounds kind of like a crappy burger chain, no?

She also seems to think that she can manage to keep our apartment seasonally current by decorating for upcoming holidays. I’m all for this because it just means there’s more crap for me to get into. Fake spider webs are ideal for ingesting.

Ever since I learned to move around on my own, the world has been so much more entertaining. These blinds are pretty great. They are delicious, too.

I’m new to this whole blogging thing, so I asked my mom how I should end this post. She said that it’s always good to end with a witty saying or a moral to the story. I’m thinking, no. Instead, here’s an adorable picture of me at a hotel a couple weeks ago. I think that wraps it up well.

The End.

P.S. Miss C will not be answering the comments to this post; I will. She’s already gone mad with power by having control over this post. Little does she know that the humbling experience of her first Halloween costume is on the horizon.

Let’s have some fun.

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I had planned on publishing this post on Friday, but I’m too excited to get started with it. May the games begin! 

We’re all friends here, right? Right. So what do you do when you have a group of friends that you want to bond with? You all go to Walmart and photograph each other wearing muumuus! No? OK, maybe that’s just me and my imaginary friends.

What people really do when they have a group of people they’ve bonded with is sit around and decide what celebrities would play them all in a movie about their friendship. It’s always fun to see who you would pick for yourself and who your friends would pick for you. “Fun,” however, does not necessarily mean “flattering.” When I worked at the restaurant in Chicago, my coworkers chose Ricki Lake to play me in the movie of our restaurant. I was less than flattered.

Wow, guys, THANKS. Source

Another time, a friend of mine told me that I reminded him of Liz Lemon. Aside from the fact that Liz Lemon is a fictional character who technically couldn’t play me in a movie because she’s too busy eating hotdogs, that was an improvement on Ricki Lake.

A picture is worth a thousand meatball subs. Source

I like to think that in a movie of my life, Audrey Tatou would dramatize me. This is perhaps my most delusional fantasy of my adult life. My most delusional fantasy of my childhood was getting to be the bassist in the Show-Biz Pizza band, but this is realistic compared to me being a beautiful quirky French-speaking waif.

Amelie=Emily Source

The thing about these three celebrities is that people who really know me and have met me in the flesh chose them for me. When given the uncensored version of me, these are the celebs they came up with. Here in Jonesville*, my personna is highly censored. You get the Emily I want you to get. Do I really look like my Gravatar image? Um, kinda? You will have to ask Le Clown what I really look and sound like since he’s the only blogger I’ve ever spoken to face-to-face, via Skype.

*I HATE the term “blogosphere” with unbridled ire, so I have renamed it Jonesville for lack of better terms. I am still accepting submissions for a better name, but good luck with that.

So let’s have some fun. Let’s put these personnas we’ve crafted to good use and cast Blogging: The Movie. In the comments, indicate that you’re game and we’ll nominate some celebs to play you. (Notice the “we”; I wish I could do this all on my own but I need your help! I would probably just freak out and nominate Daniel Day-Lewis for everyone.) Scan the comments and choose celebrities to play other bloggers you know. Check back on the comments later and see who we all think would make a good fit for you. I am going to enable the thumbs up/ thumbs down thingy, so if you don’t like that someone has suggested that Louie Anderson suits you to a tee, you can push thumbs down 1,000 times.

Also, feel free to fan my ego by telling me that you’ve been thinking I was Audrey Tatou the whole time. I totes don’t mind.

Remembering the Wrong Things

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Last week, Lily and I were conversing in the comments of her blog, and she suggested that I talk about Iceland. Since I haven’t talked too much about Iceland, I decided that this was a good idea. B and I went on vacation there last year before I got pregnant.

Here is a picture of me in Iceland eating what is regarded worldwide as the best hot dog in the world:

I wasn’t as angry as I look.

I’m looking through all these pictures we took in Iceland and I’m remembering the things we did there, but I’m sorry to say that without the pictures, I likely wouldn’t remember much about Iceland. It’s not Iceland’s fault. It’s my brain’s fault. Sometimes it doesn’t do as it’s supposed to and remember the things that are worth remembering.

Allow me to demonstrate: we spent 10 days in Iceland and did all kinds of cool things. We met fascinating people and ate strange things like whale. (Hold your buckets of red paint, not the endangered kind.) Yet the thing I remember the most about Iceland was going in a convenience store and overhearing one of the teenage employees describing Rebecca Black’s “Friday” to the other teenage employee. Almost everyone in Iceland can speak English in addition to Icelandic, but hearing the girl giggle in Icelandic and say, “Jgfbydgfyvdbshffyal fhbusafh fbgshyugf ‘Friday, Friday’ psyndhudhdyn”* to her coworker was just funny and bizarre.

*My apologies to the nation of Iceland for parodying their language above, but for reals, it’s all freaking consonants. Exhibit A:

So we flew across continents, spent nearly a week and a half in a foreign country, and what I take away from our cultural experience is a pair of teenagers laughing about a viral video on YouTube. I remembered the wrong thing. What’s disappointing is that B remembers it really vividly too. Sigh.

It gets me thinking about when I was like six or seven years old and Halloween was rolling around. I had acquired a peach princess-y dress that I think had belonged to my Aunt Jaye when she was a little girl, and I was going to wear it with a sequined tiara that had been part of a ballet costume. I was so excited to wear it for Halloween. Then on Halloween night, it suddenly got super, super cold and my brother and I had to wear our matching navy blue knee-length overcoats over our costumes when we went out trick-or-treating. It was pretty much the lamest thing ever. There are pictures of us looking totally defeated and sad in our costumes and coats.

I have absolutely no idea what that has to do with me inappropriately remembering the Icelandic teenagers singing “Friday,” but the two seem connected. I guess that’s the point. Remembering the wrong things and all. In any case, here’s a picture of a taxidermied two-headed sheep in Iceland:

“He gave his life for tourism.”

I think I have successfully given you no idea of what Iceland is really like. I am confident I owe all of Iceland (and Lily) a whopping apology for this blog post. One of these days I’ll get around to actually writing about our trip.

Life's too short to read lackluster books.

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Not a lot of thinking goes into the titling of my posts. The only real rules I go by are, 1, make it somewhat snappy, and 2, try not to use the "On...." construction (ie, "On Corduroy Pants," "On Day-Old Pizza," "On Hipster Nonsense", etc.) Today, though, the title of my post is a sentence because it is something that I feel quite convicted of and if you don't want to continue reading, I want you to at least have that one line stuck in your head because I feel it is so true.

Read more… 813 more words

For some reason, this post is pulling a file-not -found in the ol' reader today. So, let's try this again.

Life’s too short to read lackluster books.

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Not a lot of thinking goes into the titling of my posts. The only real rules I go by are, 1, make it somewhat snappy, and 2, try not to use the “On….” construction (ie, “On Corduroy Pants,” “On Day-Old Pizza,” “On Hipster Nonsense”, etc.) Today, though, the title of my post is a sentence because it is something that I feel quite convicted of and if you don’t want to continue reading, I want you to at least have that one line stuck in your head because I feel it is so true.

Don’t waste your time reading stuff you don’t love. Just DON’T.

I have been left with meh emotions about the last few books I’ve read. I’m not even going to tell you what they are because then the seed of reading them will be in your brain and you’ll want to read them to see if I have bad taste or not, and that’s not a good reason to read a book. So, sorry. I will tell you that they are very popular and I can see why, but they just weren’t a good fit for me. I put them down before I finished them and returned them to the library. Had I read them in years past, I likely would have finished them, but I am now the parent of a baby and my time is at a premium.

More and more these days, I find myself rereading books from my past that I think are wonderful. I know my time won’t be wasted on them. These are the books that challenge me, enthrall me, make me see the beauty in the world, and truly take me to another place. They are not the books for everyone, but they are the books for me. They are the books I am married to. Marriage is something you’re in for the long haul. You will change, but the other person will change with you and always teach you something new about life. Such is it with good, made-for-you books. They will always reveal their splendor anew each time you approach them, and they will meet you where you are.

I am in a polygamous relationship with several books. Here are my lovelies.

What Is the What by Dave Eggers

This is the true story of Achak Deng, a Sudanese refugee living in Atlanta. He recalls his life as one of the “lost boys” of the Sudan. Sure, it’s about survival and hope. Sure, it’s inspirational. Sure, it’s entertaining. But it’s also about how things suck ROYALLY sometimes and things very rarely wrap up neatly. Any other book would fabricate Achak’s life in a pleasant, didactic way. Not this one. His struggles are muddled with his victories. And that’s real life.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

For some reason, each time I read this book I am traveling. This is probably because it goes fast and you can easily polish it off on a three-day weekend. But just because you can read it quickly doesn’t mean it’s not worth its weight in platinum. I read it for the first time after reading two or three contemporary stinkers in a row, and it taught me not to give up on the modern novel. Even my husband – who is basically the Simon Cowell of books – was impressed with it.


Now the Green Blade Rises by Elizabeth Spires

Elizabeth Spires is a poet who I was exposed to in college. Actually, it was in the class where I met B that I first read her poetry. It was her images of circles and cycles and continuity that really inspired me, and they still do now. For our very first Christmas together, B gave me Now the Green Blade Rises and I just love it. Her poetry is delicate and strong, and it made me finally “get” poetry.

The Once and Future King by TH White

I take every single opportunity I can to talk about The Once and Future King, a recent adaptation of the King Arthur myth (and by “recent”, I mean that wasn’t written in medieval times). I’ve hijacked a lot of discussions of perfectly good books so I could go on and on about it. I just freaking love it. This is likely because I wrote my thesis on it in college, so I got in good and cozy with it for a solid six months. Not a day went by that I didn’t think about it. It’s a sprawling story with so many layers that I could read it 100 more times and I’d still find something new to love about it. I have about four copies of it so I can always be lending it out to people.

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

I was turned off by Lolita the first time I read it, and I didn’t finish it. I don’t know what brought me back to it, but when I attempted it again with an open mind, I found it to be one of the greatest books I’ve ever read. Its melancholy is delicious. The language is beautiful and the prose just meanders. It’s sad and wonderful and disgusting and perfect.

What books are you married to? What inspires you?

Big Deals and Survival

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I tend to blow negative things out of proportion. This time each year, I freak out about money because B goes back to school and only teaches classroom, non-online courses. Even though he’s working more, he makes less than he does over the summer because he doesn’t have those supplemental online courses. Money is extremely tight. Plus, there’s that whole we-have-a-baby-now variable that wasn’t present last year. Right now, saving money is not an option because we need every dime. We trim the fat and exercise massive frugality, but the stress is rough. When I see our bank balance I feel a shift in my bowels.

Oh, and our computer is on its last legs, so soon that will need to be addressed. And I’m pretty sure Wee Cee is going to keep growing and will need new clothes since she can’t wear her 6MO stuff forever. This is a shame because she has the most adorable little fleece hoodie with hearts on it that I don’t want to put away. As you can see, my priorities and motivations are completely valid and sane.

My brother is also having some problems right now. He has Aspergers so his life has always been challenging, but right now a lot of things are hitting him all at once. He was dismissed from his job for reasons that I won’t go into. He works for a huge company that you have heard of, so they have an infrastructure in place for people to appeal their dismissal, so he will do that. Still, there’s no guarantee that he will get his job back. He was also recently in a car accident that was his fault, and he’s being sued by the person he hit. This is a lot all at once. He lives with my mom and she’s been parenting him from the moment he was born. He is now 27. She had been a SAH mom pretty much from the instant I was born until my dad passed away eleven years ago. After he died, she went back to school, went back to work, has since excelled in her field, all while being my brother’s primary advocate. When things are rough in my brother’s life, they are extra rough in my mom’s life because she has to pick up the pieces. She’s racked right now. I’m glad she was here this week because it gave her an escape, but she’ll soon be returning and having to face the life of T. It makes me shudder for her.

I have a knot in my stomach when I think about these things. And a knot in my brain. And in my heart. Why do things have to happen all at once? Who or what can I blame? The hardest part always seems to be the present. Yesterday I was at the store and at the checkout counter, I overheard the massively pregnant lady in front of me say that she was already past her due date. She will have her first baby by Saturday if not before. And I just wanted to tell her to make these last few days count. Your life is made so much richer and worth living with a baby – I know this so well; it’s the theme of my life – but having one does nothing for simplicity and ease.

But what I know is that things are not as bad as they could be. These are big deals, but we will survive.

In fact, if things did get exponentially worse, we would survive.

If they got to that exponentially worse place and THEN got even more terrible, we would still survive. Even then, if they got to such a terrible place that I can’t even wrap my head around it and calculate the challenges we would face, we would still survive. We have each other: me, B, and C. I have my family. I can’t count on much else, but I can count on the love I have for them to motivate me to keep my head up. I can count on my maturity, even though a lot of the time it is relatively scant. I can’t count on my education – right now it’s the student loans that weigh on me the most – but I can count on my sense, my intuition, and the logical qualities I was born with. I can count on the wholeness of my life that God has given me. He has made me realize that I already have it all, but I just need to do all I can make it worth living. I need to see this through and realize that a life full of challenges is just as worthy of being lived as a life of ease. In fact, it’s even more worth living.

There was a time when I had just gotten out of school and I was looking for my first job. I think I literally had like $1300 to my name, and one month’s rent was $750, so the pressure was on to get a job – any job. I was miserable. I was afraid I was going to have to move home and work at the Gap like I had before I finished my degrees. My body was sore because I was so worried. I’m not relaying this story to tell you that I had nothing to worry about and that I did eventually find a job, although I did. It’s pertinent because when I reflect back on that time now, I remember it not being as horrible as I thought it was. I survived the backaches, the headaches, the stomachaches, the sleepless nights.

I recognize it as definitely not the hardest thing I had ever been thought. I survived that. I’ll We’ll survive this.

Let’s do this.